CEDAR FALLS, Iowa -- Do whistleblowers help or hinder government accountability? Sen. Chuck Grassley will answer this question with his lecture "Government Accountability and Whistleblowers" from 4 to 5 p.m., Monday, Oct. 14, in Maucker Union's Expansion Room on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

Grassley has been a consistent defender of whistleblowers and considers them to be part of the system of checks and balances. A co-author of the Whistleblower Protection Act, Grassley views his support for whistleblower protection as a duty to protect truth-tellers.

In a Des Moines Register article from July 29, he said, "Anything we can do to uphold whistleblowers and their protection is the right thing to keep government responsible. If you know laws are being violated and money's being misspent, you have a patriotic duty to report it."

The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the UNI American Democracy Project (ADP), a program of the provost's office.

For more information, contact Geraldine Perreault, chair of the UNI American Democracy Project, at 319-273-6898 or geraldine.perreault@gmail.com. Because of the uncertainty in Washington, if Grassley's visit needs to be rescheduled, notices would be sent to the media and posted on the ADP website (http://www.uni.edu/adp/).